Ol'fogasaurus black buggy

[RyanB]

Anyway, a long boring tale and I hope someone gains from it. Lee

Lee, I have always loved and appreciated the detail that you go into with your descriptions. It certainly keeps the cogs working in my own head.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

It seems like everything I have done in the last couple of years sounds like complaining, (sigh) this is not much of an exception either. We just got back from the dunes and bucked light to heavy rain most of the way home. We were too far south to get the heavy winds that they got up the coast but we did get some pretty good wind and rain when the storm fronts came through (we had to do some of the same jobs twice though).

When we got home last night and I called my best friend Harry and talked to him about glassing the body and what prep I could do and when we could get to do it. He said that Wednesday (today) was to be the best day all week and maybe for a bit longer so, since he had the day clear, he and his wife came up and I put him to work. We looked at the body and discussed how to do it and finally, after much discussion, we got too to the glass work… eventually.

Per my last post, I had the body sitting on the stand with the body lift under it so we could fit the two together so it look good and sealed up the gaps. I had one small cut to do, which I did and while I was checking things out, I discovered that not only was the front and rear messed up, but today I found out that the sides were out of fit too. The body bolts were going to come in not on the flange, but into the area where the sides of the body came down, or would ride the radius or even worse outside of the body; again, the body not being in a jig when it was assembled struck hard. We spent almost two hours figuring and discussing how to do it before we decided to turn the body over and place the body lift on the top of it. Once the body was flipped over, again there was the “how to do we do it this way”discussion and we almost turned the body back over but we finally figured out a plan that should work with the body upside down.



After I marked and cut some half moon notched through the body at the flange level we started to fit the three inch wide fiberglass cloth and mat. This is my friend Harry who I have known since high school, he has done a fair amount of fiber glassing (we both had boats but he hit a few things in the salt water at speed). Today, after 5 hours of work, we got one layer of glass all around the perimeter with a second layer on one side. We have not worked on the flanges themselves yet as the sides have to be taken care of first. Of course there will be some fix up but that is to be expected when amateurs are involved.

I can’t blame all on the guy who did the body as the pan halves have a slight tilt at the body mount tunnel which I kind of suspected and which the body lift accentuates even more. More lessons learned, if you are going to do a lift, check for a built in draft (tilt) which I failed to think of and do.

Lee

[fusername]

there is no WAY people put this much effort into these projects in real life. do most folks give up about 2 years prior to now and just suck it all in by tighting the bolts a bit more? this build is a major inspiration, and whenver I say " aww hell good enough" on my build I think of this, hang my head in shame, and keep shaping/sanding/grinding/filling or whatever it is I almost half arsed.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Thank you for the nice words Fuser; it has been a long and frustrating task but I have also learned so much because of it. I didn’t get to know my father that well but one thing I learned from him was; if you quit or give up on something, each time you get stuck or run into problems it gets progressively easier to quit or give up; this is one of several things he told me that has proved to be quite accurate. Also I don’t like to pass on crap to someone else and then they think ‘what a jerk’ and start bad mouthing me to the world; you never really know who you are talking to and/or who they know; the wrong words to the right person, well people like to talk...

(Off topic) I have been thinking about talking to Leatherneck about starting a sticky on lessons learned; it would be based on the type of the type of build; e.g., glass buggy (so many different names for one depending on where you live), rail (similar nomenclature problems as with the glass buggy), Baja. Even though the problems are often similar, there are enough differences that something like this might help someone. The idea would be to pass along things you (metaphoric you) have run into that someone might use before they started a build; ideas that did not work, things to look out for you know, just general information in a single uncomplicated string.

To make it work, there would have to be some limitations such as the originators would have only one input post and to add or change it would be via edit only. The computer would keep track of the edits so there would not be the long trail to get to information. Questions could be asked and answered as normal, but new discoveries by the originators would be via the edit of the original input.

Lets say under the Lessons learned/Baja, each person could have a post with what they learned; people could post to the string and the person would answer but new information he/she had would go into their original post; a running update so to speak. This is only a in idea and it could be talked up and the basics changed but as it is now, how do you find these problems as often, if posted are scattered all over the place. Leather, David58 and some of the other moderators have done a great job of gathering “how to”, or general information but not one on pitfalls, planning a toy or other ‘what the hey’ or ‘I never thought about that until it was too late’ information.

Anyway, I sure could have used the information before I started. I did ask around and I got what turned out to be “hip shooting” information which I didn’t understand it was until it was too late. I also got played with (for their own amusement) when I first got started playing with VWs which is something that does not happen on STF.

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Update on the fixing of the black buggy body. Today we were in-between rain storms; we haven’t had flooding where I am but the pictures on TV were interesting with the salmon swimming across the road to get up stream. Tomorrow should be a good day too but I have an appointment I have to make so the day will be gone before we get home.

My friend Harry (introduced in the last thrilling episode), his wife and Doberman showed up this morning and we got to work quickly. Like the last installment the sides were worked on first. We previously had put a second coat of fiberglass and resin on the driver’s side; so today were got work on the passenger’s side and put a second layer of glass on the front firewall of the car and worked on filling up the hole (for the 091 I had cut) and built up the flanges covering the gaps I had cut for the radius on the rear firewall. We put several coats of woven glass and mat over the hole to build it up from the underside.

Earlier in the morning I had gone around the buggy and made sure that the glass had not stuck to the lift as the tape should not have allowed that. All was well so when the resin had set, using a pry bar, I broke the body lift loose from the lift (we had put blue tape down which fiberglass usually doesn’t stick to) and Harry and I lifted it off the buggy.

Then, Harry and I started to flip the body over (I’m sorry, I forgot to have my wife take pictures); but it took some planning on how to do it by ourselves. Harry is 5’ 6” and I am 6’ and both of us are near 70 years of age so it was comical to see us lift the body off the stand and place it on a couple pieces of carpet (still upside down) I had laid down. Once the body was on the rug covered concrete, we placed the lift back on the stand and proceeded to put the body back on. We made a first attempt but just before we got the body on its side on the stand, we hit the garage gutters so we put the body back on the pieces of carpet and rolled the stand with lift back a couple of feet. We then lifted the body up and turned it back on its side again using the stand as a rest for the running board; to get a new purchase on the body, we were able to finish turning the body over and gently laid the body back on the lift… without doing too much damage.

We then proceeded to work on the front and rear flanges and the gaps that the body had after I cut the old flanges off. We now have gone though over 60’ of tree inch wide ‘glass cloth and probably 10’ of ‘glass mat and a quart and a half of resin. We are about a third of the way though but it is looking better front and aft. The sun started to go down about half way though the glassing closed of the front of the buggy and we will have to wait until next week at the earliest as time and weather permit.



The body has been flipped over and we are starting to lay cloth before we are going to work filling gapes with mat.



This a part way though the start to lay resin in the cloth. The funny color in the plug that filled the hole is the sun being blocked in that area by the amount of mat we had to use. Once we got the cloth laid and formed back to the glass on the under side of the body, I started cutting thin strips of mat and we laid them in the gap and/to tore the mat apart and stuck the fibers in the hole too. We then started to lay the fillet and laid another layer of cloth over that. We then move to the front as the sun was starting to fall into the ocean quite quickly.



This is Harry starting to work on the front fire wall. The gap ranged from about a half of an inch to an inch and a half (at least). I did find out what was used for the firewall, it is the type of fiberglass that is used for cheap signs and does look a little like honeycomb but is not. I guess a lot of car guys do use it for their cars. It cannot be formed, I was told, but it sure looks like there has to be a way to do it by the looks of my car. It was also used as doublers on my car too.



This is where we stopped at we had just enough time to clean things up and get the car into the garage. We cut it pretty close!

I hope you enjoyed. Lee

[Leatherneck]

Thanks for the update Lee. It is looking better and not sure if you could of done it any other way.. Are you still plan on running the iron block on this ride?

[Ol'fogasaurus]

To be honest, right now I dase'nt know. The current plan it to get the body mounted and the pan components together and on wheels, bug trans, shifter then put it up for sale. The seat mounting and steering shaft (dependent on seat location) will be up to the new owner as will be plumbing and wiring.

We are trying to figure out how to overcome one problem right now; how to get the mounting flange to move outboard so I can bolt the body to the lift/chassis. The weather here is not conducive to rolling the body outside and glassing out there and the wife-poo doesn’t like the out-gassing smell in the house (attached garage). Another full week of rain.. at least. We thought Wednesday would clear up for a while but it is now being forecasted as another day of liquid sun.

I have had to pass on several rails that the Cologne engine would fit into and work well in but wife-poo says no new until old goes… Catch 22.

I have give the advice to know what you are doing (getting into) and the amount of work it takes before you get into something many times mainly because of this build. I have been working on it off an on since '93 and right now, I feel it needs to go to another loving home. If it doesn’t sell, then I will rethink my current plans and maybe finish it. I still think would make a heck of a cool looking off-road car though; I think better sand than where a lot of rocks are involved as it is a light weight body.

I still have a lot to do before I put it up for sale and a lot of things to learn. Since things seem to be going forward, my patience and want is back somewhat and it is fun again. Earlier on, during another time of indecision, I did some extra work on it I didn't need to do and that is causing me more work, but I did learn from it so that is good.

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

The rain quit, the morning was cold with a touch of frost so I almost called my friend and told him not to come up as the weather was not cooperating. I was glad I didn’t as when I pushed the body and stand outside, the ground was still wet, the sun was just starting to come out from behind the neighbors house,, and the temperature was in the low to mid 40’s… and that was about 10:00 am. By 11:00 am, the ground was drying; I was making a mess from removing fiberglass ends with a 3 inch sanding disc, and the neighbors were crossing over to the other side of the road and making the sign of the cross. I think I scared the neighbor’s 6 year old kid when he saw me with a double filter respirator; sound deadening head phones and being all white from fiberglass dust. He came over with his father to say hello, but was a little standoffish when I talked to him and there was a cloud of dust spewing out when ever I talked.

I actually got to lay some fiberglass today. It started out taking out two 8 inch sections of already laid ‘glass as there were problems with them not laying flat; there is a fastener that needs to be there and with some bubbles and taper, I would have had to make a tapered washer or two. I thank the lord of air tools for their invention and to HF making them affordable to us amatures. I finally broke the body and lift apart to lay down some new tape to keep glass and steel from sticking together. About 3:00 pm, we ran out of 4 inch wide mat so I have to go and get quite a few feet of mat tomorrow as we need to build some thickness up for strength.

'Glassing is easier than I thought but not as easy as it looks. Working with mat is messy and frustrating and working with cloth is... frustrating and messy and both have minds of their own. I figured out that “bubbles” is not a girls name, it is the witch of laying ‘glass.

My friend and I were talking about the side rails and simultaneously we came up with an idea for fixing one of the big problems with the side rails. The body narrows down too much to allow the bolt and washers to fit, much less not ride the radiuses. I had to cut several half moon openings in the side of the body to give fastener access and relief for the washer and bolt head that I previously mentioned. If the idea works it will save a lot of time and aggravation if not, then back to the “Black Buggy takes King’s Knight and stomps him”.

I will try playing with fiberglass when the weather cooperates again which may not be for a while.

Lee

[Lotrat]

I fiberglassed once. Just the hole in my trunk. I am not fond of the process at all. Messy, stinks, and the time is limited. The end product was "gudenuff" for me. My hats off to those that can do it well.

[turbobaja]

I bet you're just itching to get back at some more fiberglass work aren't you Lee? I'm supprised you got it to set up with such cool temps outside. Glad you had a good experience with it at least. The stuff can be like a double edged sword.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Thanks, yes we were pretty lucky but Harry has gained a lot of experience fixing his boats. Murphy’s law states (indirectly) that there are a lot of logs and other debris floating in the salt water areas (mainly Puget Sound and particularly Hoods Canal) where we water skied and sometimes log will sit there waiting for you, then rise at the right moment and WHANG (or thud)! An example; in the early 60’s, we were out skiing one summer day, it really was too windy to go out but, being young we went out anyway. I was on the rope on my short (4 foot) slalom ski and were heading over to Twanoh State Park from Tahuya (which is a little over 2 miles I think) to get to an area where the wind was not driving the big waves (we are not talking about nit-picky white caps here, bigger than that; young person stupid waves [no offense to young people meant here but at that age, we have a tendency to push the limit] that beat the puddin’ out of you) all of a sudden I stopped (not of my own free will either), the rope went flying forward and I was under water, head first. I surfaced and looked around for my ski and when I found it, I turned it over to see if it was OK and there, stuck to the skag of the ski was a 6 by 4 inch piece of bark (fur tree), over an inch thick. It had to be a pretty big log (we never did see it) that the boat went over and it bobbed up just as I was to go over it. It wasn't “a sinker” as the bark was too fresh and we were in pretty deep water at the time. I finally threw the piece of bark a way when my mother passed away last spring and we were cleaning her place out. Anyway, that is one of the reasons why he has fiber glassing experience (plus he likes to make electronic gadgets and he needs to make enclosures).

When the temp finally got to 50 or 51 degrees out we started to ‘glass; we were adjusting the number of drops of catalyst the whole time (his valuable experience here). We limited ourselves to mixing just two ounces of resin at a time because of the temperature induced amount in catalyst we added. The sun was out so it felt plenty warm, shirt sleeves if we hadn’t been playing with fiberglass, but it really wasn’t that warm. About 4:00 pm, the sun got to a point where experience told us we were through for the day as it was going to cool off quickly so we pushed the buggy body inside and started to clean up which only took a few minutes; when I went outside to check for anything forgotten the temp had already dropped to under 46 degrees in that short period of time.

I need to go to HF and see if they have any of those bags of cheap brushes as the cheap ones at Lowes run about 97 cents a piece and we go though 2 or 3 of them per 4 hour session of glassing. I guess we could have used Acetone to clean and save them but the continual daubing of the brush to get the resin into the mat of cloth destroys the bristles’ and makes a mess of the brush. We also use a lot of gloves, the nitrate solvent gloves, he uses the throw away gloves, I use the ones you can clean in acetone and reuse several times. Thicker material and less touch sensitive, but good safe protection from sticky fingers.

As I said, I feel a little more comfortable about ‘glassing so I may try to do some un-supervised work in order to get this done… when the weather permits. My friend and his wife have to travel over 30 miles each way to get here so it is a big deal for him to give so generously of his and his wife’s time.

Lee

[turbobaja]

Man, that story about water skiing with logs in the water gives me chills. I do a lot of boating in lakes around here (too chicken to put my boat in the salt), but seeing debris in the water always freaks me out. The larger reserviors like Rife Lake are pretty bad for floaters that can do some serious damage. Sounds like you and your buddy had some close calls in your younger years . Short of structural/floor repairs, my glass work on boats is pretty limmited. I do have an old EasyRyder covered canoo with a small hole in the stern from falling out of the rafters of my dads shed. Once the hole was found (just below the water line) Dad figured it would make a great gift for me . I paddled many a mile in that canoo years ago, definately worth fixing and keeping.

I'd get the cheapest brushes you can find and cut the bristles down so they're stiffer and you can put more pressure on the cloth. An extra set of hands is always helpful too.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

I'd get the cheapest brushes you can find and cut the bristles down so they're stiffer and you can put more pressure on the cloth. An extra set of hands is always helpful too.

Now that is a good idea, never thought about customizing a brush. I remember seeing people doing it painting and modeling, but never linked it to 'glassing. Gud 'put!

Yeah, that second set of hands is both good and bad; when they block your vision or hit you hand while you’re trying to play with the first application of resin to a small piece of torn mat.

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

I went up to get some more fiberglass mat yesterday and was able to run some questions by the owner. We had run out of mat so I got talking about mat vs. cloth to him, telling him that we were adding thickness to the mounting flanges by using mat; his response was asking why were we not using rove (I think that is how it is spelled). Rove looks like cloth except it has a very wide (material) weave and is pretty thick. He said that mat short strand temporarily stuck in higgly-piggly manner, is the stickiest (best bond) and is OK for build up but the rove is going to give more thickness with less material. He said; cloth, then mat, rove, mat, rove, and so on finished with cloth for a total of at least 3 layers. He also said that the use of fove is going to use a lot more resin (probably double of more) also so I doubled my purchase of resin.

I also talked to him about the amount of catalyst we were using and he agreed with what we are doing vs. the weather conditions was right. I told him I was worried about too much heat buildup by using more catalyst and he said it would take a lot more catalyst than we were using to get that much heat going.

We got into a casting (type of use) which brought up another question I had; I have to make some covers for the holes I had to make it the side of the body for the bolt heads and washers to fit in so the heads did not ride the radius of the flange to wall. We tried dropping cloth perpendicular to the sides of the body lift but it did not work, the body seemed to act like a magnet and any sag was sucked in to the body and we had to try to punch out the relief covers which generally did not work. I have to sand that layer of glass off and start with another plan. I have been thinking about using either plastic pipe or exhaust tubing cut into a parabolic/sine upper edge and tapered in to the side of the body, then putting in a floor to use as a mold to cover the holes and to use as a surface for the bolt heads and washers to sit on. He felt that it was OK to do and I could use masking tape as a “non-stick agent”; or when I asked if it was OK to bond the metal inside of a fiberglass sandwich for additional strength and ease to make, he thought that would work OK.

We talked about Kevlar and he said it could use standard resin but that is not the best for it, Kevlar is not like E glass or S glass and the resin does not “soak in”. the resin (bad term?) you use is more like a bond, if I understood him correctly. I have a long strip of Kevlar and I was thinking about using it for additional strength but he said it is not necessary good in compression, not any more than E/S glass would be (I’m synopsizing here) and the cost of material would be a lot higher.

Anyway, some extra knowledge for what it is worth.

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

It’s been a while since I posted to this string but I am still working on it slowly. Not only has it been too wet and cold to work in the garage but I discovered that I was rebuilding a pair of single trailing arm spring plates but only have double arm spring plates so I am looking for a pair of single arm spring plates that will work with 26 9/16 long torsion bars. I had boxed the double trailing arms I had for the double arm spring plates (4 bolts and in different locations than the 3 bolt trailing arms) and found out that I couldn't use them on the buggy so I gave them to someone else not thinking about the difference in the trailing arms. The other double spring plate trailing arms I have I cannot use on this project either and for the same reason as the other pair, the boxing blocks (either using plate or tubes) the use of the stock shock mount which I need to keep in this case. Prowlers does make a set of tubes for boxing and still using the stock shock location but not for this buggy, at least by me.

Still learning about VW’s… sometimes the hard way.

Lee